GoGoGadgetMachE
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Michael
- Joined
- Jan 23, 2020
- Threads
- 153
- Messages
- 5,614
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- 12,655
- Location
- Ohio
- Vehicles
- 2021 Mach-E 1st Ed., 2022 Lightning Platinum
- Occupation
- Professional forum cheerleader and fanboy
There's two different things that can be (and are) both true.
The first is that the concept of a dealer between you and the manufacturer is not that crazy. Every time you go to a grocery store or big box store, you're going to a dealer, just not of cars, but of eggs or hammers or whatever. From a consumer's viewpoint, the standard retail model in fact is the car dealer model for most goods purchased by most people. The Tesla model is a bit weird; yes, sometimes, you buy something like a cell phone direct from Samsung or whatever but generally you're going through a middleman. That middleman is then also someone to complain to and return to and get help at, though.
The second is that car dealers are weird, annoying resellers. Sure, when you buy from Best Buy you get the soft "extended warranty" push, but not much. Generally the price is the price, and you don't mess with that. But consumers (in the US) are conditioned to "negotiate" with car dealers, and not with the grocery store. That plus the "finance" layer - at Best Buy, you use your credit card and you've already "negotiated" by getting that specific card - make car dealers weird. And, if we're being honest with ourselves, consumers are part of the problem here. Saturn famously was "fixed price" at the start, CarMax is "fixed price," and yet some consumers are like "yeah but it's not really fixed right, that's just for the suckers; let's talk." Some of this is because of the cost of the product - a car is a lot more money than a refrigerator so we "need" room to negotiate. In the Tesla model, there's no negotiation at all, no finance manager add-on pressure, none of that. So it's actually a lot more like "traditional" retail in that sense.
So, car dealers have a place still, even in 2021, but it's not the traditional place. They need to adapt. Tesla is feeling that pressure already because they just don't have enough Service Centers and people in a lot of places and can't come close to a Ford or GM or Honda or whatever on that point - and that's because dealers exist. And, if dealers realize that, and stop screwing around on the purchase side, they will survive. It's going to be a long battle though, and one that will take consumers to cooperate.
The first is that the concept of a dealer between you and the manufacturer is not that crazy. Every time you go to a grocery store or big box store, you're going to a dealer, just not of cars, but of eggs or hammers or whatever. From a consumer's viewpoint, the standard retail model in fact is the car dealer model for most goods purchased by most people. The Tesla model is a bit weird; yes, sometimes, you buy something like a cell phone direct from Samsung or whatever but generally you're going through a middleman. That middleman is then also someone to complain to and return to and get help at, though.
The second is that car dealers are weird, annoying resellers. Sure, when you buy from Best Buy you get the soft "extended warranty" push, but not much. Generally the price is the price, and you don't mess with that. But consumers (in the US) are conditioned to "negotiate" with car dealers, and not with the grocery store. That plus the "finance" layer - at Best Buy, you use your credit card and you've already "negotiated" by getting that specific card - make car dealers weird. And, if we're being honest with ourselves, consumers are part of the problem here. Saturn famously was "fixed price" at the start, CarMax is "fixed price," and yet some consumers are like "yeah but it's not really fixed right, that's just for the suckers; let's talk." Some of this is because of the cost of the product - a car is a lot more money than a refrigerator so we "need" room to negotiate. In the Tesla model, there's no negotiation at all, no finance manager add-on pressure, none of that. So it's actually a lot more like "traditional" retail in that sense.
So, car dealers have a place still, even in 2021, but it's not the traditional place. They need to adapt. Tesla is feeling that pressure already because they just don't have enough Service Centers and people in a lot of places and can't come close to a Ford or GM or Honda or whatever on that point - and that's because dealers exist. And, if dealers realize that, and stop screwing around on the purchase side, they will survive. It's going to be a long battle though, and one that will take consumers to cooperate.
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